A man found with £830,000 worth of cannabis after driving at 100 m.p.h. on the wrong side of a motorway has been jailed for seven years.
Gerard Nixon rammed a Garda car and veered across the M1 motorway three times in front of oncoming traffic. He crashed into a wall but continued the chase before jumping from his car while it was still moving.
The court heard Nixon believed he was being chased by anti-drugs vigilantes.
Mr Patrick MacEntee SC, defending, said his client was a chronic alcoholic and had been promised £500 to bring the drugs to Belfast.
Nixon (36), of Anna Hugh Park, Loughgall, Co Armagh, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to possession of cannabis with intent to supply and dangerous driving endangering life on May 7th, 1999.
Det Garda Patricia McGarrity, from the National Drugs Unit, told Mr Luan O Braonain, prosecuting, that she and other gardai had tried to stop Nixon's car on the M1 motorway between Swords and Balbriggan. He rammed one of the cars and sped across the green verge in the middle of the road and into two lanes of traffic travelling towards Dublin.
Mr MacEntee said Nixon had been an alcoholic since he was 16 and was unable to hold down steady work for many years. He had also been traumatised by a bombing in Loughgall in 1987.
Judge Elizabeth Dunne said she appreciated Nixon was a vulnerable person but that did not distract from the seriousness of the offences. She set a review for May 7th, 2002.